Business Owner Burn-out: Are You At Risk?
You may have found this blog for marketing tips, but it’s your mental health we’re discussing today. Specifically, the mental health boogeyman of all over achievers; burn-out.
The World Health Organization has added “burn-out” to the 11th edition of International Classification of Diseases. The IDC 11 defines burn-out as, “a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed.” It is considered an occupational phenomenon rather than a medical condition.
The significance of burn-out is so great that the WHO has begun developing evidence based guidelines for mental well-being in the workplace. If the World Health Organization is taking burn-out this seriously, guess what, you should be too.
Business owners are especially vulnerable to burn-out due to the incredible amount of responsibility they carry. Here are the most common symptoms of burn-out.
Increased Cynicism and Agitation
Increased cynicism and agitation are often early signs that burn-out is on the horizon. As the stress of your responsibilities begins to mount, you may start feeling like your accomplishments aren’t adding up to much, that others aren’t pulling their weight, and that you’re steering a sinking ship all alone. These symptoms are often confused with or combined with depression. It’s often difficult for business owners to know if they are dealing with burn-out or another type of mental health challenge.
This is why it’s very important to seek mental health treatment if you start to suspect that your job is affecting your mental health in some way.
Chronic Exhaustion
Running a business is tiring, but there’s a difference between being overwhelmed with exhaustion and being tired after a good day’s work. Exhaustion produces a sense of dread and hopelessness surrounding your responsibilities, and it’s one sign that you might be headed for burn-out if you’re not there already.
Avoidance of Responsibilities
This can include the avoidance of responsibilities at work or in other areas of your life. As you begin to feel more and more overwhelmed, you may start to use avoidance as a coping strategy. You may notice a lack of motivation to go to work and lack of enthusiasm for projects.
Physical Symptoms
In severe cases of burn-out there can also be physical symptoms. Physical symptoms can be varied, but often stem from the drop in immune system efficiency associated with chronic stress. The American Psychological Association cites that there are over 300 studies linking chronic stress with decreased immune function. When your immune system isn’t functioning properly, you’re more likely to get sick and feel awful physically.
Now that you know what burn-out looks like, let’s consider some steps you can take to stop burn-out and start recovering.
Speak to a Mental Health Professional
Speaking with a therapist or counselor can ease the symptoms of burn-out and help you develop healthy coping strategies for all areas of your life. A mental health professional can help identify specific things that might be contributing to your sense of burn-out and help identify other mental health challenges you may need to address.
Prioritize Down Time and Self-Care
The lack of down time and self-care is often the number one contributing factor to burn-out. Those who suffer from burn-out are often personality types that feel they can’t take time for themselves or perhaps that they don’t deserve to take time for themselves. Regardless of the reason, this is an extremely unhealthy mindset that will lead quickly to mental health struggles and burn-out.
Delegate Tasks to Others
A resistance to delegation is another challenge that is often associated with personality types that are vulnerable to this condition. As a business owner it’s easy to feel that everything should be your responsibility because it’s your business. But remember, you hired employees for a reason. If you have a business partner they are there for a reason. The compulsion to micro-manage so that nothing goes wrong is often grounded in a desire to do your best, but the end result is stress and failure.
The best kinds of success are achieved when you work in cooperation with those who care about you and support your vision. When tasks are delegated it makes everyone feel like they are part of the team, more is accomplished, and the workload is evenly distributed.
Taking care of yourself and your own mental health is crucial to well being and the long-term success of your business. It’s tempting to think you can do more if you just keep ignoring your own needs, but the opposite will turn out to be true. Burn-out will eventually catch up to you and the consequences can be far reaching.
